Bamboo is one of the most phenomenal examples of plant life. It shoots upward at a rate of 41 centimeters a day and can grow to 36 meters. It spreads so rapidly that if there is a road running through a growth of bamboo, that road may disappear completely in a month if it is not kept open!

There are about five hundred kinds of bamboos. They all have smooth, hollow, jointed stems with a strong, watertight partition at each joint, and all grow very rapidly. While most bamboos flower every year, there are some that bloom only three or four times in a century. The flowers are like those of grains and grasses. The fruit is usually like grain, and in some kinds, like nuts.

The bamboos are tropical and subtropical plants. They grow in Asia, in South America, and a few species grow in Africa. About thirty kinds of tall bamboos from other parts of the world have been successfully introduced into California and Florida.

The uses of bamboo are so numerous it is almost hard to believe. In the United States, bamboo is chiefly used in fishing poles, walking sticks, and phonograph needles. But it is in the Oriental countries that bamboo is really put to use. People build entire houses with it, using large sections for posts, and the split stems for rafters, roofing, and floor planks. They strip off the hard outer layers for mats and lattices to separate the rooms. The joints of the largest kinds are used for buckets and those of smaller ones for bottles.

There are even certain kinds of bamboos so hard that they can be made into crude knives, and beautiful and strong baskets are woven of strips from the outer coverings. In Japan, gardeners use hollowed bamboo stems for water pipes. In China, the inner pulp is made into the finer grades of native paper. The Javanese make bamboos into flutes. And many Oriental people eat the tender shoots of bamboo as a vegetable. So you see how valuable the bamboo is in certain parts of the world.

Amazingly enough, bamboo is a grass. It is the largest member of the family of grasses, though most people think of it as a bush or a tree.